


An Ultimatum

by IObse33



Category: Cars (Pixar Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Hope, Lack of Communication, Power Imbalance, Psychological Trauma, Racing, Torture, Training Camp, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:01:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22424482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IObse33/pseuds/IObse33
Summary: When a car is racing for a human, there is training, and there are rules, ever changing and every more unrealistic. If a car doesn't comply, there are punishments of extreme, unreasonable length, growing crueler by the day.Today, Strip must suffer the worst of harm, and it's not even his own fault.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10
Collections: Inequal





	An Ultimatum

**Author's Note:**

> For extra context, refer the collection in which this work is posted.

Throw a human into lava. 

How does that feel?

Searing, burning pain. Melting. Feeling yourself come undone. Wanting to fight and swim to the top and you're already gone. Didn't even suffocate. 

Take a welding gun. Put it to a car, weld. Watch the sparks fly. 

It's the same feeling, all the melting pain, the car feels it all. 

Strip feels it all. 

The shock and terror creeping through the seams between every body panel, electrifying ad he watches. Watches the man prepare the gun, pliers sharp and dangerous and they could easily hurt his wing. He tucks his tyres under him in fear and the man only laughs. 

-

He is a good, perhaps great car by all standards. He is hardworking and generally obeys by all orders. Inhumane or not, he completes his tasks. 

The air is cool today, made colder when whipping against Strip like the humans tools. Sharp, unleashing the same sting. Crack. That could not have been a good noise. Still, on he pushes, faster, round and round the circle, lap after lap, left, turn left. Focusing to find the perfect line and seeing only a blur ahead of him. 

Dizzy. 

Only the freezing wind cutting through his paint kept him conscious. What did he do to deserve this? No matter. He's too tired to remember. 

Only that it's night time and the stars above are swirling, tar blue wash ringed blurred white. Was it dark when they started practice? Struggling, harder, to no avail. He can't find a line. Inside, outside, his gas tank flips and he pushes, he revs and accelerates. 

This is punishment. 

Still, after, exhausted and lacking sleep-in the morning? Four now?- he is dragged by the wing back into the hauler. Still, back at the centre, the cold racing wind is replaced by the crack of the whip to his body. 

As if he were failing real practice. 

At least this one isn't spiked with metal. 

Crack. 

Crack

Crack. 

The noise again, from within. 

-

Strip already knows. 

They want to rid him of his headlights. Losing function to your body by force. An ultimate punishment, and to be inflicted upon him. He is not allowed to tremble nor tear up. Somewhere in him, closer to his rear but not between his rear tyres, pain flares as he wills his engine to turn. 

Broken piece, damn you to hell, he thinks. 

It's why he's here now. 

This room is fifth of all doors running down the corridor at the back of the warehouse. This is the room cars rarely leave. Cars steam in and out of the other four rooms all day long. Sound proofed. Windowless. A car is lucky to leave the fifth room. 

The walls are black. 

In here, it's just Strip and the human. 

Falling. He's falling. He's not sure where or how but the black, textureless walls are stretching upwards and he feels empty. Hes light and almost jittery. The Human is miles away and that is perfect. It means Strip is getting away. 

His eyes shut close. 

Strip is blessed. 

He'll leave the room after today. 

Alive. 

-

He can almost forget, during practice. Races are better. In races he is truly maintained, kept healthy, even gifted encouragement. In races they are cars, filling their purpose unbound just as they should. Races mean the warmth and heat of summer. Racing means punishment of lesser brutality, because they need to be able to be repaired in time for the next race. 

If five cars hadn'wet gone before Strip the track would have been ice. 

He remembers the first car that went out, returning with a crushed in nose and bumper, and Strip swerved as if he himself were on sludge and water and death. 

In a race there would be a human screaming at him over the intercom, another goonie of the Owner. 

Here it is just him and a human assistant on the side as the lone crew. Was Strip truly here to keep himself from going lazy as a car? Were these tests only to weed out the weak?

Even if so, he must obey. To not is to die. 

He pulled in to the one man crew pit. It was time for a change in tyres, more than, Strip had waited it out. Still, he is rejected, still, he is sent out to complete his laps. 

Around and around. Left, left, left again. He's Losing his track again, wheels fearful of coming into grueling contact with coarse pavement at 180. 

Any longer, just a few more laps and they'll blow. Air pressure bursting through material running too thin. 

3… 2…

1…

He's called to stop, and Strip near tears up in joy. He doesn't dare to do so, it will be perceived as weakness. As him begging mercy. He sits there, engine cooling, cold, damp air steaming around him, a few drops forming along his body colour near ice blue. 

They're at a real track today. The stalls in the background where cars are kept stay in a state of disarray, each smeared with a rainbow of flaked paint. The stands are well kept, cold iron gleaming in the winter sun, seats forming rows all along the stadium. Humans only. No car gets to watch the races in person. No car would want to. Want to support the sport. 

Strip is smacked right on the top of his trunk, and told he's given a gift that day. 

"You get to drive yourself home, lucky chap."

Strip glared low, one of his few and far inbetween acts of rebellion. His tyres had still not been changed, and already the human was turning the engine of some other vehicle deprived of their soul. 

If Strip is careful, he'll make it 'home' 

-

When he wakes up from faint clouds of smoke coilng and gripping his mind, the human is before him. 

The gun is poised directly above his headlights. 

He tries to rev his engine and kick into reverse. Run. Running. Pushing. His engine won't start, the pump is dead. 

And besides, he's in a parking boot. 

-

They're back at it. 

Or, Strips back at it. 

Deprivation. It's all deprivation with him. He'll be a beauty of a car in the future, he has to be kept looking nice. Ensures no death, ensures years more of mental torture and lack ofs, ensures almost no external physical torture, at least. 

Perhaps this is the worst. Without sleep, he can let habit take hold, fly around the asphalt while he's far away in his mind, hoping somewhere far away hes not punished later for his wobbly line but mostly at peace. On tyres he can almost ignore it, everything still feels fine. He drives best when it's only new tyres they restrict. They never actually let his tyres blow, though that doesn't lessen the fear. 

Now there's pain. He knew that tiny occasional crack was bad news. There's always pain when he's driving on little to no fuel. There's nothing to cool the pump down. But on he goes, and he knows it's significantly worse this time. He can feel it. The pain no longer pulses like the tide of the sea, steadily growing stronger and more wrenching, and then fading away again. Now There's a constant underlying pain, a drag on him, within him, only screaming louder as time wears on, as more laps are completed. It's like all the screaming and yelling Strip wanted to direct to the humans but never did. Now it's surfacing from within, clawing long scratches and deep gauges that never lull away, all deep within him, trapped within him, trapping him with it. 

He survives, and is dragged into the hauler after. 

-

It felt like an explosion. Somewhere between his wheels, front and back. Pain shooting out wild and through him like starving flames. But he's fine. There are no flames unfurling from under his hood. Strips eyes widen, and the pain doesn't halt. He slows despite his effort, and with each renewed attempt, the pain reaches deeper. 

He slows to a stop, engine killed, and the human's footsteps are thunderous as they near him. The yelling starts and Strip lowers to the ground. The pain numbs. 

"We didn't say you could stop! Get going!"

He tries to turn over his engine, instead he gets a series of wheezing sounds like a chain of sneezes with a grueling undertone for the beat. The pain within him flairs. 

"Stupid car, what, gas? That what you need? Thought we taught you not to beg!"

Gas doesn't help. He can't start. 

"Idiot car. Can't do what you're supposed to! You think you'll get off easy for this?" The human kicks Strip. 

He is cored with pain. He can't see, eyes shut tight so as to not cry out. 

-

He pops up his headlights. 

They can't weld down his headlights if they're up. 

He tries to reverse again, despite being broken, despite being put in a boot. He pants and instead crawls backwards until his rear hits a wall. He pushes into it, as far away from the human laughing at him as possible. It's fruitless, they sit together in this roam coated black for over an hour, until the panic wears Strip down into the void of unconsciousness. 

He relaxes, he lowers to the ground, grateful for some sleep, finally. 

This time he wakes up to searing pain hot as molten rock. It carries through the entirety of his body panels. Twenty lightning bolts shooting through him, all from only one headlight, and he loses his voice less he scream in pain. 

Finally, the shock wears off, and adrenaline kicks in. He scrambles back again, he tries to jerk away but that only spreads the pain. His engine tries to start and like diving into below zero water he is engulfed in more pain, in and out. Split down his middle, spreading and unfurling through all his mechanics, body panels alive and stinging as heat shoots through the cover of his headlights, never ending, a stream of sparks showering down and burning. 

He attempts, he struggles to lift his headlights upward, and metal welding begins to break, only causing more catastrophic pain. 

So he stops, and he lowers them,and he disappears into the black tar of the room as he physically continued to struggle inside and out. He didn't know he could faint so commonly, but on he stared at nothing, only dark. He stared nowhere and only imagined the sparks flying through the air. Somewhere he pondered harming himself further, trying to start as much as he was. 

Somewhere he thought,

Somewhere…

-

Some Cadillac, outrageous in his gold flaked paint, cow hide and bull horns for a grill. Outrageous for the proposition of buying out some cars. Outrageous for being the CEO of a racing corporation. 

Unheard of. A saint cars only dream of. 

But here he is, talking to the owner, right outside the warehouse, light golden as the caddy streaming in through the open doors. Right where the other cars can over hear. Strip is in a pen a few too many down, he can't hear everything, only glimpses, and he's exhausted. Ready to sleep. He tries to pay attention, to take the excitement of the other cars and make it his own. 

It's warm out, bright and comforting. The Cadillac… The Cadillac seriously wants to buy and race cars… A poser for a secret other human? A car servant to the human?

He's too weary. Strip forgets. 

He wakes up in his pen. 

But it's only a dream. 

His pen is floored with hard packed red dirt, and cold steel walls built with no shock absorption. Above, long fluorescent lights travel down the warehouse in rows, shocking Strips eyes when they open. The ceiling is also composed of steal beams and tin roofing. The only heat comes from a cars own engine, or the floor of the earth during summer. 

Ghosts of sparks torment Strip, and he moves to press against an ice slick steel wall to cool the heated pain of memory. 

He can't open his headlights. He struggles and shuts his eyes in effort for the better half of an hour before finally giving in. He sinks into the cold ice of the pen, desperation and desolation overwhelming him. 

Silently, he let's the tears fall. He remembers being in another pin, a larger one for families, with his parents. A small child. He was raised to obey. Obeying brought less pain. Wait, wait instead. Wait for the owner to leave an opening, for weakness to be revealed. All these years he lived by that moral, yet the owners power seemed absolute. 

And besides. Look at him now. 

He remembers the Cadillac. He cannot decipher, reality? Dream? 

No matter, the Cadillac is the ticket out, he only had to endure and wait and surely he will be picked to be bought. He is the fastest of the fast. Dream or not, the golden car is the loop hole he was waiting for. 


End file.
